Develop the innovation challenge and vision for the station
At the start of this playbook, we discussed the SIZ vision and its importance to achieve NR and wider stakeholder buy-in. This section focusses on the topic of the innovation challenge and station vision. What problem do you want innovations to solve? What is the question that you want answering through new solutions? What kind of station will you have created when these problems are solved and challenges addressed?
Setting an innovation challenge
A good innovation challenge balances the local context of the station and need of costumers with the organisational priorities and strategies of the station and NR more widely. It takes a step towards achieving the station vision as it aims to tackle issues that are currently standing in the way of realising that vision.
Identifying a challenge of which the impact can be measured as part of existing evaluation formats will ensure that the trialled solutions can be reviewed in relation to regional objectives. These formats may not be sufficient to capture all the impact of the trials but should make communication easier with those stakeholders. For example, stations review passenger experience of the station with a so-called ‘score card’. Trials that respond to specific questions in the score card review can help improve station scores.
A challenge can be identified through combining bottom-up and top-up approaches. Often a combination of both is used to ensure the most appropriate challenges are identified.
Bottom-up
A bottom-up approach can start with the problems and challenges that exist now at the station, for example those related to customer experience. These could be elicited by speaking with the teams that are tasked with operating or maintaining the station daily (such as gateline staff, facilities management, operations managers, maintenance engineers), or canvassing passengers to understand where the focus of innovation should be to tackle problems and build momentum.
The station likely operates a periodic scorecard across numerous metrics that can be consulted to understand current barriers to performance, whilst yearly passenger surveys will give indication of trends and long-standing issues.
Whilst aligning with national rail focused strategies, challenges also need to allow the local identity of a station to be maintained as it innovates.
Top-down
A top-down approach focuses on the implications of wider strategy on the stations. Understanding how the aims of the organisation or industry influence decisions made about the station will allow to link up concrete innovation challenges with system-wide objectives. It is likely that higher level challenges keep larger stakeholders engaged, though concrete, small scope challenges, may address an issue that are common across several stations. It is therefore important to understand what the right scope for challenge is.
Recommendations:
- Consider wider strategic aims of the organisation or industry. This could be at a local station level, follow the route/regional business planning process, or be informed by wider approaches within System Operator, Property, Safety, Technical and Engineering (STE) or Route Services. This will set the framework for the problem that innovation is trying to ‘fix’.
- Encourage creative thinking when setting challenges – this will help you explore a wide range of innovation areas and keep you thinking in an open and constructive manner.
- No matter the aims for the Station Innovation Zone, key aspects that are important to consider:
- Inclusivity, diversity and equality
- Accessibility
- Sustainability – e.g., decarbonisation, circularity, biodiversity
- Safety
- Set up a workshop or review session with the steering group. The review process is to ensure the challenge descriptions give a realistic view of what can be achieved, whilst still helping to achieve the vision or overall aim such as improving customer experience.
- The challenge scope should be informed by the opportunities of the SIZ: the available operational infrastructure, budget, timescales and support. Part of the SIZ purpose is to learn how best to create an environment for innovation in the station (as well as deploying trials). So, start small, get going, and be able to refine and alter focus as you progress. Starting small allows you to be specific in your requests.
- It may be helpful to scout vision statements and strategies from similar initiatives. Where do they overlap where do they compliment your SIZ? (Some examples are Future Lab and TfW Lab.)
- Bring capabilities related to the challenge – i.e. challenge around accessibility, providing accessibility experts w
BTM Learning
- The first and second round of challenge statements were developed by the SIZ steering group. In subsequent rounds we aim to define challenges to reflect the internal priorities of the Regional Network Rail team.
- SIZ framed its challenges around a central theme of ‘What Does The Station of the Future Look Like’. A series of workshops with contributors from across the rail industry, local authorities, passenger interest groups, and residential groups were able to develop a series of ideas that developed into four themes; Sustainability, Seamless, Safety and Social. These four themes are the foundation of the challenge statements that are developed each year and stimulate a broad intake of ideas from SMEs
- The social station theme was not as essential as the other 3 themes, seen as a ‘nice to have’. More work is needed to achieve buy-in for the importance of this challenge and realised that part of this was bringing in different local stakeholders in addition to our key stakeholders within the rail ecosystem. It is important to explore avenues to gain traction at a city level within the SIZ to maximise potential realisation of benefits at the place from innovation within the station.
- Through running the SIZ at BTM, it became clear that there is a need for a coherent and clear industry steer on innovation of passenger experience at stations. Aligning approaches on development of technology and innovation with route/region/centre so that success criteria can be better aligned on corporate measurement metrics (e.g. scorecards etc). There could be better alignment with rail test centres at e.g. Newport and TfW Lab. There is a need for regional alignment to be built around a clear understanding and requirements of passengers/users of public transport.